Sometime around my 18th birthday I received a plain brown package in the mail. It was about the size of a VHS tape and had no return address. Turns out it was a gift of sorts, though it wasn’t from a relative or a friend. No, this was a present from the kindly folks at Gillette, who had sent a package containing a Mach 3 Turbo and a tiny bottle of shaving cream, as if to whisper from afar, “Shave that neck hair, you sloppy fuck. You’re a man now.”
The Mach 3 was notable because it had three blades crammed into its pivoting head, making it a destroyer of hair, a veritable neutron bomb compared to the Bic muskets of yesteryear. At least that’s what the packaging seemed to promise. On it, the Mach 3 beamed with the intensity of a solar flare, and a single tendril of blue light weaved its way out of the conflagration, off of the package, and into the heavens, presumably, where it dry humped the face of God. Shaving was no longer a rote exercise; it was a daily expedition. Like a monkey blasted into space, you could scarcely fathom the enormity of your undertaking.
If three blades seemed like overkill, and it fucking did, then a brave new world lay ahead. Supping up shaving kits was once comic fodder, but with the razor wars continuing apace, we find unleashed upon the world monstrosities such as the Schick Hydro 5, which I received in my Christmas stocking this year, much to my consternation. (Five blades? FIVE fucking blades???)
Edward Gibbon, an 18th century British historian, wrote: “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” The Hydro 5 is a footnote in that history — an overwrought, unwieldy footnote bedecked with blood. The “5 Ultra Glide Blades” lovingly shred your skin like a meat slicer going to town on a hunk of applewood smoked ham. The “Hydrating Gel Reservoir” secretes not soothing aloe but the concentrated venom of a million fire ants. Mid-shave, you tremble as you realize that this is it. It’s all over. One of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will be bursting through your bathroom door at any moment.
Recommended for: masochists, undiscerning yetis, apocalypse enthusiasts